✔ Choose trusted varieties and, if you can, talk to neighbours about their successes. But do take occasional adventures, too!
✔ Prepare soil before planting vegetables. Add organic matter, such as home-made compost
✔ Always use a proprietary compost, rather than home-made compost, when sowing vegetables in pots or trays.
✔ Make maximum use of space by successional sowing – planting or sowing a new crop after harvesting the first.
✔ Rotate crops. Try not to grow crops from the same group, such as brassicas, root crops, alliums or legumes, in the same place the next year.
✔ Sow seed sparingly, when sowing in pots or trays, so that when seedlings germinate they have plenty of room to develop.
✔ Water thoroughly in dry spells, preferably with saved rainwater, to…
